2013 Julius Stone Address: Professor Brian Leiter

Sydney Law School is please to announce the 2013 Julius Stone Address guest speaker, American philosopher and legal academic, Professor Brian Leiter (University of Chicago).

"The Case against Free Speech"

Western liberal democracies are rife with institutions that view massive restrictions on speech as essential to realizing the ends of liberal democracies. In universities and schools, for example, no one thinks the classroom should be turned over to unregulated expression of opinion, without regard to cognitive value, civility, or pedagogical purpose.Professor Leiter's focus shall be on the courts. In courts, the idea that the unbridled freedom of speech - the "unfettered exchange of ideas" to quote a typical formulation of the United States Supreme Court - has any value is rejected from the start. We recognize a plethora of epistemic reasons - reasons pertaining to the discovery of the truth - for restricting speech. There are obvious disanaologies between the courtroom and the polity at large, but the aim of this Lecture is to explore those in some detail.Professor Leiter willargue that to the extent there are reasons to have less regulation of speech in society at large, these pertain only to the epistemic reliability of our institutional mechanisms for restricting speech.

About the speaker

Brian Leiter is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 2008. He taught previously at the University of Texas at Austin (1995-2008), the University of San Diego School of Law (1993-1995) and, as a visiting professor, at University College London (Philosophy), Oxford University (Philosophy), Yale University (Law), University of Paris X-Nanterre (Law), and University of California, San Diego (Philosophy).

Professor Leiterteaches and writes primarily in the areas of moral, political, and legal philosophy, in both Anglophone and Continental traditions. He is the author of Nietzsche on Morality(Routledge, 2002),Naturalizing Jurisprudence(Oxford, 2007), andWhy Tolerate Religion?(Princeton, 2013), as well as many articles in such journals asEthics, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Philosopher's Imprint, Social Philosophy & Policy, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Law & Philosophy,and elsewhere.

He has edited a number of volumes, includingThe Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy(2007) (with Michael Rosen),Nietzsche and Morality(Oxford, 2007) (with Neil Sinhababu),The Future for Philosophy(Oxford, 2004),Nietzsche(Oxford Reading in Philosophy, 2001) (with John Richardson), and Objectivity in Law and Morals(Cambridge, 2001). He is the founding editor of the Routledge Philosophersbook series and (with Leslie Green) ofOxford Studies in the Philosophy of Law. He was previously co-editor for eight years ofLegal Theory, and also currently serves on the editorial boards ofNotre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Journal of Moral Philosophy, The Philosopher's Annual, Oxford Bibliographies Online: Philosophy, Theoria(Sweden), Anilisi e Diritto(Italy),Problema: Anuario de Filosofia y Teoría(Mexico),Nietzsche Online(Germany), andRevista de Teoría Jurídica(Argentina).

Professor Leiter has given or is scheduled to give a number of named lectures at universities around the world, including the Taylor Lecture in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Otago in New Zealand, the Fresco Lectures in the Department of Jurisprudence at the University of Genoa in Italy, the Bernd Magnus Lecture in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California at Riverside, and the 'Or 'Emet Lecture at Osgoode Hall School of Law at York University, Toronto.

This event is generously sponsored by the Educational Heritage Foundation

Lawyers/barristers: attendance at this lecture is equal to 1.5 MCLE/CPD unit.